Dear students
You may be aware that GUCU members have voted overwhelmingly to continue our resistance against the senior management team (SMT)’s plan to make 46 staff redundant and to push through a financially irresponsible and deeply damaging restructure of professional services – particularly student facing services.
GUCU members are your lecturers, tutors and administrators and have seen first hand how hard this year has been for students – indeed some of us in the GUCU executive are students ourselves. In order to pursue all available avenues to defend our members, GUCU has initiated third party mediation at ACAS to try to resolve the dispute and these negotiations are ongoing. We have made proposals to management in local dispute resolution meetings that would have minimised strike days and disruption to students’ learning – all of which were rejected. This is in a context where management openly admits that the financial rationale for the redundancies no longer applies – the College has made more than enough money over the past year to meet their savings targets. Unlike SMT, GUCU has done everything in our power over the past year to negotiate and call on management to put the interests of students first.
The industrial action that we have taken so far has managed to hold off the sending out of dismissal notices which are now due to be issued by Wednesday 13 April. But we need to continue to take action in order to hold management to account for their disgraceful treatment of staff and students. That’s why we have taken the democratic decision in our branch that if management does not commit to zero compulsory redundancies and a halt to the restructure, members will engage in ongoing industrial action in the form of a marking and assessment boycott, to begin on Monday 4 April.
We want to be very clear about what a marking and assessment boycott will look like.
A marking and assessment boycott is not a full strike but a form of ‘action short of a strike’ (ASOS). This means that all of the rest of our teaching and support for students can go ahead as usual. However, our members won’t be uploading any grades or feedback through formal channels like the VLE or Turnitin, or taking part in any centralised college assessment processes. This includes not participating in exam invigilation, exam board attendance and administrative work relating to exam boards.
We want this action to hit SMT, not students. In order to do this, GUCU members are committed to providing ongoing support to students throughout the action. This will mean that GUCU members will be responsive to students’ individual circumstances and will take all action possible within the bounds of the boycott to ensure that no students face detriment. As part of this we commit to:
- Provide informal feedback to students that occurs as part of ongoing teaching during the boycott;
- Support applications for further study/research/funding commenting on expected grades/performance where possible and appropriate;
- Making sure any student depending on receiving their grades in order to access funding, or for the purposes of applying for further study or jobs is fully supported;
- Making sure that international students whose visa status may be dependent on receiving grades are fully supported;
- Writing support letters advising funders/selection panels, and giving indications of students’ past and expected performance where necessary and appropriate;
- Doctoral upgrades and vivas will go ahead as they otherwise would.
The return of grades will be delayed for a period of time, but will definitely take place following the delay. We understand that 3rd year undergraduate students will be concerned about the implications this action may have on the completion of their studies. This will only impact on 3rd year UG graduations if SMT refuse to concede to our collective demands, and push ahead with sacking staff and restructuring the institution by Friday 15 July. SMT can stop the boycott by halting the restructure and working with campus trade unions to reach zero compulsory redundancies.
We believe that students should not have to pay for management’s intransigence and we stand in full solidarity with students who have requested refunds and taken action to protest management’s plans. Our position is that the College should put in place full mitigation to acknowledge the teaching time that has been lost unnecessarily due to SMT’s intransigence throughout the year.
For this reason we are demanding that the college put in place the following:
- A clear plan for how assessment grading will be altered to take into account teaching time lost;
- Automatic extenuating circumstances for all students and no penalties for late submission and deferral;
- Full refunds for all students who have lost teaching time due to strikes.
GUCU officers have met with student groups and will be organising an online student forum – details below – to answer questions about the marking boycott.
At other universities like Queen Mary, management have responded extremely punitively to staff undertaking ASOS, deducting up to 100% of staff wages even though legally deductions should be commensurate with the work that is lost. Goldsmiths SMT have stated in negotiations that they ‘reserve the right’ to raise deductions beyond the 20% of pay currently being deducted for ASOS. We want to be very clear to students that such action will place staff in a position where we will not receive any payment, not just for the marking we are boycotting, but for any of our work. If SMT stoop to these union-busting tactics, we may not be able to provide the support we want to students, as we would not receive any payment for this work.
In the next phase of the dispute we will continue to support students, even as we take all possible actions to defend our jobs and working conditions, and students’ learning conditions.
We’d like to invite you to a student staff assembly to discuss the action on Monday 4 April at 5pm
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87432595840
Passcode: 977520
In solidarity,
GUCU officers